12 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

You don't need to be formally trained by a Jedi or even possess access to genuine Jedi materials to emulate the path of a Jedi. Career names are just fluff, and the Jedi career and specializations could just as easily represent a Sith or a self-trained savant.

13 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Or trained by an instructor from the temple. Case in point Yoda training Luke.

Yes and no, IMO. Part of the design choice of the system, until the era books arrived, was that it was to build the type of character you'd find in the Rebellion Era so it covers so it covers how a new Jedi would learn without any, or very limited and long ago, direct Jedi Temple experience. We cannot underestimate the value of having all the resources of the Jedi Temple on a PC's development. This means that PCs in this era are necessarily going to develop differently because they don't have access to the many different masters, classes and data available at the temple, if they even have access to a master at all. The system works pretty well by forcing the PC learn from several talent trees to cobble together their mostly un-directed development. The universal Jedi Master tree condenses some of this to represent more standardized training that's just not available any more. Keep in mind that even if the PC has access to a Jedi Master for training that Jedi is going to have their own strengths and weaknesses and can't send their student to another master to fill their gaps in skill or knowledge.

Anyway I think if you are going to play in a pre-Rebellion Era when the Jedi Temple was still functioning then it makes sense to use the specific trees and specializations in those era books but if you aren't you probably shouldn't. At least that's how I see it.

PS. People generally don't play 60 year old Jedi masters but I'd agree if a Player was playing an older Obi wan then the universal tree would be appropriate.

6 hours ago, MrTInce said:

Ask him what Han Solo tells officials what his job is. Han wouldn't say smuggler he'd say trader. There's no trader career...

But there is a Trader specialization under the Explorer career...

1 hour ago, FuriousGreg said:

PS. People generally don't play 60 year old Jedi masters but I'd agree if a Player was playing an older Obi wan then the universal tree would be appropriate.

There are several species with lifespans that make 60 years seem like a short period of time. Wookiee, Whiphid, Pau'an, Hutt, and Dowutin are just a few examples.

1 hour ago, FuriousGreg said:

Part of the design choice of the system, until the era books arrived, was that it was to build the type of character you'd find in the Rebellion Era so it covers so it covers how a new Jedi would learn without any, or very limited and long ago, direct Jedi Temple experience. We cannot underestimate the value of having all the resources of the Jedi Temple on a PC's development. This means that PCs in this era are necessarily going to develop differently because they don't have access to the many different masters, classes and data available at the temple, if they even have access to a master at all. The system works pretty well by forcing the PC learn from several talent trees to cobble together their mostly un-directed development. The universal Jedi Master tree * condenses * some of this to represent more standardized training that's just not available any more. Keep in mind that even if the PC has access to a Jedi Master for training that Jedi is going to have their own strengths and weaknesses and can't send their student to another master to fill their gaps in skill or knowledge.

...condenses...quite inadequately, imho.

On a slightly tangential rant, since you brought up design choice. This game is starting to suffer from the same thing D20 had: endless specs, aka Prestige Classes, that you could never explore in a lifetime of gaming. From a business perspective it's essential, like each new talent tree is a deck of Magic cards with new and exciting abilities that fans *have* to buy...but from an actual playability standpoint the whole pile is a big black hole collapsing of its own weight.

Just now, whafrog said:

...condenses...quite inadequately, imho.

On a slightly tangential rant, since you brought up design choice. This game is starting to suffer from the same thing D20 had: endless specs, aka Prestige Classes, that you could never explore in a lifetime of gaming. From a business perspective it's essential, like each new talent tree is a deck of Magic cards with new and exciting abilities that fans *have* to buy...but from an actual playability standpoint the whole pile is a big black hole collapsing of its own weight.

I agree so much.

• Clone Soldier as a separate career from Soldier?
• A Jedi career when we already have six careers based on different aspects of Jedi?
• A Republic Naval Officer universal spec when we have Commander/Commodore?
• A Republic Representative (and soon a Senator) universal spec when we have the Diplomat career?
• Far more examples in my head...

The big problem is that the era books are written with the assumption that they have to be usable without any particular core book. This means that there is a back-and-forth between making them useful and making them overlap existing materials, and it's just going to get worse from here. Will Collapse reprint the Jedi career along with a way to get FR high enough to use the specializations in the book? If so, it's redundant for those with RotS. If not, it's of limited usefulness without RotS. Neither is an ideal outcome.

16 minutes ago, whafrog said:

On a slightly tangential rant, since you brought up design choice. This game is starting to suffer from the same thing D20 had: endless specs, aka Prestige Classes, that you could never explore in a lifetime of gaming. From a business perspective it's essential, like each new talent tree is a deck of Magic cards with new and exciting abilities that fans *have* to buy...but from an actual playability standpoint the whole pile is a big black hole collapsing of its own weight.

I agree. Further, some of the new things they add seem more to fill the required number of things each supplement has to have (3 species, 3 Specializations etc.) rather than what might really be missing or unique. Worse some of those books actually do have a few pages of really useful stuff that really should have been part of the CRB.

11 hours ago, MrTInce said:

Ask him what Han Solo tells officials what his job is. Han wouldn't say smuggler he'd say trader. There's no trader career...

What he would do is say that if you want to play a former soldier who turned mercenary on the rim in an EotE you'd have to play a hired gun, you couldn't be the soldier career. If you wanted to be a smuggler who joined the rebellion in an AoR game you'd have to play a spy or something from the AoR book. When doing a mixed game EotE careers all have obligation and AoR careers all have duty regardless of what the theme to the game is. You can't be a bounty hunter unless you actually took the bounty hunter career. You have to be the clone species if you want to play a clone trooper because of well, it has clone in the name and your name has to be CT-numbers or ARC-numbers. Stuff like that. He's a good GM in the game, just a bit limited in the outside of the box stuff for Star Wars.

Double post...

Just now, Ahrimon said:

What he would do is say that if you want to play a former soldier who turned mercenary on the rim in an EotE you'd have to play a hired gun, you couldn't be the soldier career. If you wanted to be a smuggler who joined the rebellion in an AoR game you'd have to play a spy or something from the AoR book. When doing a mixed game EotE careers all have obligation and AoR careers all have duty regardless of what the theme to the game is. You can't be a bounty hunter unless you actually took the bounty hunter career. You have to be the clone species if you want to play a clone trooper because of well, it has clone in the name and your name has to be CT-numbers or ARC-numbers. Stuff like that. He's a good GM in the game, just a bit limited in the outside of the box stuff for Star Wars.

Oye. That hurts my brain. You have my sympathies.

2 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

What he would do is say that if you want to play a former soldier who turned mercenary on the rim in an EotE you'd have to play a hired gun, you couldn't be the soldier career. If you wanted to be a smuggler who joined the rebellion in an AoR game you'd have to play a spy or something from the AoR book. When doing a mixed game EotE careers all have obligation and AoR careers all have duty regardless of what the theme to the game is. You can't be a bounty hunter unless you actually took the bounty hunter career. You have to be the clone species if you want to play a clone trooper because of well, it has clone in the name and your name has to be CT-numbers or ARC-numbers. Stuff like that. He's a good GM in the game, just a bit limited in the outside of the box stuff for Star Wars.

That's way too restrictive for my tastes.

I'm not even sure how some of that would work. If a Hired Gun goes to get a IPKC do they somehow cast detect career on him/her and say, "Nope, you'll never be a bounty hunter since you're not a Bounty Hunter" or something? Likewise, can a Commander (Squadron Leader) never achieve ace status regardless of kills just because they are not an Ace?

The only one I can see (but even then don't wholly agree with) is limited the Clone Soldier career to Clones and the Jedi career to current or former members of the Jedi Order. Just about everything else released before that is supposed to be a broad generalization.

Further, matching Career to metamechanic doesn't matter to me as much as matching metamechanic to campaign. My games always include Obligation for everyone along with Morality for Force-users. Duty might exist along with those for some games (when dutybound Obligation isn't quite right), but it never replaces them.

52 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

That's way too restrictive for my tastes.

I'm not even sure how some of that would work. If a Hired Gun goes to get a IPKC do they somehow cast detect career on him/her and say, "Nope, you'll never be a bounty hunter since you're not a Bounty Hunter" or something? Likewise, can a Commander (Squadron Leader) never achieve ace status regardless of kills just because they are not an Ace?

The only one I can see (but even then don't wholly agree with) is limited the Clone Soldier career to Clones and the Jedi career to current or former members of the Jedi Order. Just about everything else released before that is supposed to be a broad generalization.

Further, matching Career to metamechanic doesn't matter to me as much as matching metamechanic to campaign. My games always include Obligation for everyone along with Morality for Force-users. Duty might exist along with those for some games (when dutybound Obligation isn't quite right), but it never replaces them.

No kidding. I go for what effect do i want to achieve for the style of character i want to play

On 5/19/2019 at 7:12 PM, Underachiever599 said:

What career skills would you give a hypothetical Jedi Master specialization tree?

I'm thinking it would be best to avoid overlapping too much with Padawan or Knight, as there's a good likelihood anyone taking Master will already possess those two trees. And of course, since Master won't be a starting spec, there's no benefit to having Master's skills overlap with the Jedi Career's skills (Athletics, Cool, Discipline, Lore, Lightsaber, and Piloting [Space]). Knight already has half the skills I was thinking (Leadership, Negotiation), while Padawan has the other two (Vigilance, Education).

Wouldnt it be specialization skills since career skills will be the same in all three Padawan, Jedi knight and Jedi master if there was one since Jedi master will fall under the jedi career path? This is how all the career paths all go. The career skills are the same in all the specializations while the specializations themselves have their own skills based on that specific specialization.

Jedi master specialization skills might be more in tuned with some types of negotiation skills or leadership, maybe even warfare since they will be Generals at least in the war. Something along those lines.

1 hour ago, Metalghost said:

Wouldnt it be specialization skills since career skills will be the same in all three Padawan, Jedi knight and Jedi master if there was one since Jedi master will fall under the jedi career path? This is how all the career paths all go. The career skills are the same in all the specializations while the specializations themselves have their own skills based on that specific specialization.

Jedi master specialization skills might be more in tuned with some types of negotiation skills or leadership, maybe even warfare since they will be Generals at least in the war. Something along those lines.

There's no such thing as "specialization skills," in game terms. Specializations offer "Bonus Career Skills." A skill is either a Career Skill, or a Non-Career Skill. Hence why I worded things the way I did.

Anywho, I'm shocked this thread is even still remotely alive, now that we already know the answer to what bonus career skills the Master tree is getting in Collapse of the Republic (Charm, Knowledge [Core Worlds], Knowledge [Education], Perception). We also know what the General tree is getting (Knowledge [Warfare], Leadership, Piloting [Planetary], Vigilance).

What I find somewhat disappointing about both Master and General is that their skills overlap somewhat with Padawan and Knight. Vigilance and Knowledge (Education) are both in Padawan, while Leadership is in Knight. So in the unlikely case that someone took all four existing Jedi specializations, that would be three redundant career skills that they would be getting no benefit from. Could be worse though, I suppose.